


Ice Child, Who Are You?

by Iurien



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, Gen, Hell, Implied/referenced infant death, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:27:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29473968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iurien/pseuds/Iurien
Summary: A work I wrote for a Discord RP server I’m in. There’s  not much, if any, context needed though to read this.Ellie is an ice demon from Hell, who treks to Russia to find lost memories. Her head pounds with familiar feelings, and has to make sense of her broken memories from a time where she was only just born...(Mentioned character Cyndy is owned by my friend Ghost.)





	Ice Child, Who Are You?

Ellie put her phone away in the back pocket of the shorts she was still wearing. A bear was barking sadly and confused up in the tree it was clinging to, scared witless by Ellie’s previous...Defensive actions. 

Her clothes were old and tattered and dirty beyond washing by now. Her skin was cold and nearly frozen to the touch, bluish but unyielding still to the freezing temperatures of northern rural Russia. Her footsteps made deep imprints, dragging into the easily three feet of snow piled up all the way into the horizon. It would be clear where she came from and where she went if you just went by the lines in the otherwise untouched snow. She pressed on, cape blowing in the harsh wind and eyelashes clung to with ice and large flakes of snow. If she weren’t already dead, perhaps now she’d be on the brink of it.

The locals of the last town were helpful, but ultimately their leads led to nowhere at all. They gave her food and water and a coat, with a distant acquaintance saying something about a dilapidated house they used to meet someone who knew someone who met up with her mother. A comically long shot, but it was somewhere. It was also nowhere at the same time. The house was empty and rotten away, a nest of rabbits in the floorboards and roots overgrown into the walls made it nice to spend the night in, but no more. It led her to here, now, trekking through the snow an hour and a half after leaving in the morning for greater things.

She had no idea where she was going, but the cold was easy to walk away from.

Ellie didn't have a clue where to go, but something in her chest and stomach told her where to  _ get away from. _ It only led her further up north, a week longer and she’d be at the arctic oceans. Maybe that's where she had to go, after all. Ellie didn't question it, merely kept walking and checking her phone, finding it somehow easier and easier to go time without sleep, without food or drink- It's like she was  _ in her element here. _

Eventually, in the dead of night that her phone said was 4:57am in Hell Central Time. Hell was her home, but there was a place before that, wasn’t there? It was the reason she was out here now, under the twinkling lights in Russia that were too low to be stars wove between the trees, beckoning her return to them. Clearing the last row of pines and firs, Ellie’s iced over shoes clanked against cut rock and stone. She stood still for a moment, breath slow and no puff coming out even at the exhale- Street lights. There were street lights up ahead. 

They lined the thick stone-laid walkway, for it was not at all a road. There was snow, of course there was, but a recent effort was made to clear it recently. Looking down one side of the street, houses sprawled on for as long as the street remained within her line of vision, and they probably continued on even as it curved away behind a house. The other end- a small cul de sac, obviously a market as flyers were stuck to poles and doors and outsides of buildings with closed counter windows. There was a large and wide open area in the middle, and as Ellie stepped out onto it, she realized there were smaller streets nestled between each cluster of buildings, leading likely into more commercial areas.

Feeling a deep sense of calling and warmth, she trudged her feet down an alleyway. Everything felt nonsensical for some reason, like she was living a dream right now. Walls that look familiar that she had no business knowing. The sounds of shuffling in the deep night comforting in a way she’d never been comfortable in hearing before. The smells of burning ice and baked bread from a nearby shop bringing back emotions she didn't know she had. 

Ellie walked for a long time. She appeared like a ghost haunting the town, hypnotically walking and swaying side to side, glossed eyes never straying too far or too fast. The lamps became sparser, buildings getting closer, shops and built-in houses looking more and more like they haven't seen use in decades. Suddenly someone tugs in her chest, and Ellie stops. She looks down, to the left- a small crevice with a trash can a little further in. A baby blanket lies on the ground, torn and dirty and frozen. Empty. Traces of something left behind. 

She realizes something. Nobody has been back here in ages. No one would find this place. No one would come looking. No one would know if anyone else was here. She would be alone forever, staring at this blanket with old fur all over it for the rest of time, wondering why she hears crying in her mind, and it  _ makes sense now. _

This is where she’d died.

She has never felt so  **cold and angry.**

People usually described anger as hot and frustrating, steaming and like being boiled alive. But Ellie would describe it as icy and cutting, sharp jagged edges cutting through the haziness of frustration and right into the core of rage, bursting and freezing over like liquid nitrogen on a bed of water. Anger was like climbing out of a frozen lake you had just fallen into, and you are focused on nothing but the revenge on the one who pushed you in. 

Anger was like starving to death in a metal trashcan nestled between ancient buildings, never to be found. 

A gasp cut through the yelling inside Ellie’s head. For once, she acted fast- swiveling around to face the source of the sound. A woman. Not young by any means, but not old either. Gray hairs, almost silvery laid upon her head, and she wore several furry pelts that were as wrinkled with stress as her face was. She was clutching a rosary between two gloved hands, pressed close to her chest. Why was she down here all this way?

”There is grave here. Leave.” Ellie said, forewarningly, accent thicker than it's ever been. The woman staggered a breath, holding the rosary impossibly closer to her chest, tears in her eyes that threatened to freeze if they escaped the warmth of her face.

Warmth. That's right, Ellie felt  _ warm _ right now, staring at the lady- Why was that?

”Are you angry spirit? Have you come here to be haunting me?” She replied, broken English oddly reminiscent of something Ellie may or may not remember. 

”Something like that. I died here, once.” Ellie fought to tear her gaze away from the woman, not liking the emotions she was being bombarded with right now. She turned away, cape fluttering behind her as she did so, starting to walk away. A shout made her stop in her tracks.

”Ellietta? дочь?” The second word came out broken and whispered, but not any less powerful than the first. The first. 

Ah, that's right. Her name really was Ellietta, wasn't it?  _ Ellietta Ivanov. _ The name her mind insisted was the right fit when she woke up in Hell, shivering and hungry. Back then, she couldn't think or move until she said that name. Though, after that, she couldn't bear to say the name again, instead opting for a close and more common relative- Ellie.

She slowly looked back, eyes wide and fearful but so, so hopeful.

”... матушка?” Ellie whispered, barely audible over the biting wind, fingertips thawing as the syllables slipped past her lips. Yet it must have reached the other woman anyway. The woman began crying as she dropped to her knees, hands together in a praying gesture as she gazed up at Ellie. Her lip quivered as she spoke reverently.

”I-I never wanted to-to leave here, I- There was no...No choice! I could not..he could not...!” She whimpered, holding the rosary up towards Ellie now, begging almost. ”Please...! Mercy! Помилуй печальную душу!” Ellie stood there, silent and judging. So she really was left here intentionally? Her mother never intended on coming back for her? She was never  _ wanted? _

Okay. Fine.

Ellie started to turn, about to leave her mother behind just as she once did to the baby in the bin. ”W-wait! Please! Ellietta,  _ Wait! _ ” The woman cried, screamed. Ellie snapped to look down at her again, eyes glowing an empty and icy gray, face cast in ominous light from the moon above, further shadowed by the hood of her cloak.

”Wait for what? To be forgotten again? I am cold, mother- But not colder than you. I live now, warm at home and fed well. I do not need you, as you did not need me.” Ellie pointed towards the trash can she died in. ”Rot in your actions.”

She turned away, walking down the narrowly moonlit path and leaving the woman sobbing, pleading for forgiveness she didn't deserve. Her mother sat there on the cold ground, abandoned in the dark and groveling for a crime committed against an innocent soul. 

Revenge was best served cold, after all.

_ (A few hours later, in a suburban area with warmth all around, Ellie thawed and left a trail of snow and melting ice behind her as she clambered up onto a patio. She lumbered up to the glass door, tired and eyes sunken and blue hued, with a knock on the glass to signal her arrival. Cyndy said her door was always open, right? Did that account for 7 in the morning, light barely peeking through the grass on the horizon after an oddly quick trip from Russia to America? She hoped so. She felt warmer here. Not enough, but more than she was back in the alleyways...) _

_ (Ellie waited with an old, torn baby blanket clutched in her hands.) _


End file.
